THE only thing missing from the NFL’s an nouncement Tuesday that next Sunday’s Panthers-Giants will be moved from 1 p.m. to 8:15 for NBC (for money) was another reminder from Commissioner Goodell that “PSLs are good investments.”

It figures that the game originally scheduled for NBC, Chargers-Bucs, will be moved to 1 p.m. In late December, the cold climate game replaces the warm climate game as the Sunday night game.

Bud Selig, Roger Goodell, doesn’t much matter anymore. Abusing sports’ most devoted customers – presenting them take-it-or-shove-it options on deals that defy common decency, deals that genuine commissioners would dismiss as preposterous, pure-greed money grabs, is now just in a day’s work.

A 1 p.m. game switched to an 8:15 p.m. kick (and a well after 11 p.m. end) on a Sunday night in New Jersey on Dec. 21. There’s not even a “Sorry for the inconvenience” attached, not a hint that anyone at the top feels the least bit bad, or heaven forbid, embarrassed, about it.

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Leave it to ESPN. In the same season Carolina WR Steve Smith was suspended, and by his own team, two games for cold-cocking teammate Ken Lucas during preseason practice – breaking Lucas’s nose, he continued the assault as Lucas was down – ESPN has Smith starring (with Kenny Mayne) in an ESPN promo.

Adding to the stench, the spot opens to a graphic that reads, “ESPN Offices, Sept. 24,” which was three days after Smith’s first game following his suspension.

During the 2002 season, Smith was suspended (and arrested) when he for two days hospitalized teammate Anthony Bright in a fight during a team meeting.

Has Disney-owned ESPN no standards? Or, because it has no standards, was Smith the perfect fit?

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Dr. Steve Resnick writes to ask whether anyone noticed if the quarter President Bush flipped during the Army-Navy coin toss, when it landed, had become a dime.

From Sea To Shining Sea: Let’s see, now, the governor of New York resigned in disgrace, the governor of Illinois has been arrested, and the fame and fortune of the governor of California – the former chair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness – is rooted in steroid use. Sweet!

Item: CC Sabathia agrees to sign with Yanks. Good thing Mike Francesa works in radio and not for a newspaper. Anyone who so often gets things so wrong wouldn’t be allowed to deliver newspapers.

NFL Network’s Saints-Bears Thursday might have been a good game had the replay rule not beaten the sense out it. . . . Lookalikes: Anthony Vella of Huntington submits WFAN’s Craig Carton and actor Verne Troyer (Mini-Me).

Good info from Tony Kornheiser during ESPN’s Bucs-Panthers Monday nighter. Carolina head coach John Fox, Kornheiser was quick to say, was the Giants’ defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells. Nice. Except that wasn’t even a good bad guess. Fox’s first year with the Giants was ’97; Parcells left after ’90.

Spanish-language soccer writer/broadcaster Roberto Abramowitz informs us that the English Premier League’s West Ham United now wears the name of an on-line betting service across the front of its jerseys – even as West Ham midfielder Matthew Etherington is digging out from $1.2 million in gambling debts.

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Maybe I’m losing it, missing it or never had it, but one of my favorite local sports TV personalities is (yikes!) a team’s public relations man.

Pat Hanlon, 16 years the Giants’ head of PR, as the moderator or a panelist within the media dis cussion segment on Ch. 4’s “Giants GameDay,” is ter rific. He gets it. He’s bright, quick and even occa sionally bites. For a chap charged to present the party line, Hanlon’s both credible and enter taining.

See whether it’s just me. Saturdays, near the end of the half-hour Ch. 4 shows, which begin at 7 p.m., or on the Giants’ Web site under “Giants Online!” Barack Obama couldn’t find a better press secretary, no?

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Not a football season day passes without things that make complete sense being packaged and presented by experts as things that should strike us as surprising. Lions’ second-year WR Calvin Johnson, for example, is now regularly cited for having a fabulous season “despite” his club’s no-win situation.

But because bad teams are often forced to throw – and frequently early and often – it stands to reason that Johnson would be targeted early and often. The NFL’s top 12-15 receivers almost always include several from the worst teams. WR Roy Williams two years ago had the NFL’s third most receiving yards – for the 3-13 Lions.

No matter, paid experts will continue to encourage us to be amazed that two-plus-two is four.